Current news concerning Oaxaca, Mexico as well as Mark's thoughts, for what they are worth, on the world's most pressing issues of the day.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Wall falls on 9/11 commission

The 9/11 commission's credibility is getting buried under a ton of debris as "The Wall" falls on it. Mary Jo White's prescient warnings in 1995 to Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick has fallen into the nefarious hands of The New York Post. The 9/11 commission was also privy to these memos from White but chose not to mention them, presumably because Gorelick was a member of the commission.

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities."

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism . . . can have deadly results."

"We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."

"What troubles me even more than the known problems we have encountered are the undoubtedly countless instances of unshared and unacted-upon information that reside in some file or other or in some head or other or in some unreviewed or not fully understood tape or other."

OK, let's see what everybody else is saying:The Anchoress is getting confused. I think that is the intent.

Betsy at Betsy's Page asks, "If they couldn't be fully honest about this part of the history, what else might they have been ignoring or downplaying?"

The Captain says, "Once again, the 9/11 Commission gets exposed as a dangerous cover-your-ass effort by bureaucrats who made national security an almost impossible task for operational units. Again, we ask: what else got left out of the report?"

Wizbang says, "Remember, this was at the exact time Clinton accused Lewinsky of telling people about the affair. Clearly he knew the Presidency was in jeopardy. Do you think maybe he was distracted?"

Patrick Ruffini says, "'Finally confirmed, officially' are weasel words from the pre-9/11 days when we mistakenly believed anti-terrorism was just gumshoe work. It's a sign that the Clinton perspective on national security hasn't changed much since that pleasant sojourn from history."

Jon Henke at QandO says, "He should not, however, pretend that he would have been a regular President John Wayne had he only known who was behind the attack."

Austin Bay, who has been there and done that, says, "If Jamie Gorelick wasn’t the weakest commission member, she was the most compromised."

John (not Juan) Cole at Balloon Juice says, "Again, while all the second-guessing is interesting (and goodness knows the Democrats would be trumpeting this were roles reversed), what is more interesting is why this is all coming out right now." I think that's being a bit cynical, John, but then you are talking about politics, aren't you?

Ace from his HQ says, "Hmmm... didn't I just cover the Mary Jo White memo last week? And how she pled to tear down Jamie Gorelick's Wall of Silence, and warned it would end in tragedy?" ("pled" may look strange but is an acceptable past tense and past participle of "plead", as is "pleaded".)